


On Laura

by vanlaria



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanlaria/pseuds/vanlaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here is a secret Derek will take to his grave: Laura would have hated Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Laura

**Author's Note:**

> Its come to my attention recently that, as a fandom, we really know very little about Laura Hale and who she was or what she liked. Not that I don't love the fanon-typical Laura, but here is my attempt at creating a version a little different.
> 
> For Brianna

Here is a secret Derek will take to his grave: Laura would have hated Stiles.

Even before the fire she was quiet and rarely joked. She walked tall, with a confidence and easy grace Derek has never been able to even imitate. Noble to a fault, their mother had said fondly. Laura wasn't the eldest child but she was easily the most composed, the most controlled. It made her the perfect choice to be the next Alpha, if not the most fun sister.

Laura trained nearly daily with their mother, learning to meditate, learning to fight, learning to lead. She flowed easily into her beta form, never lost control on full moons. The lore of the werewolf came easily to Laura's mind, tales she re-spun for the family's entertainment. She absorbed their mother's wisdom like a sponge, quoting her softly at dinnertime, as they discussed the day's lessons. Their special mother-daughter moments were those of blood that washed off and bruises that faded quickly. Derek came home on more than one occasion to find them smiling together over a broken leg sticking out at a horrible angle. Over matted smears of blood in their mother's short dark hair.

Stiles, for his part, isn't so squeamish about blood any more. (Although Derek's still grateful that Stiles was unable to cut his arm off, that Scott arrived in time) He's not thrilled about it, where it appears, but he's gotten good at setting broken werewolf bones. He can patch himself up pretty good now too, with the help of his peculiar kind of magic. He's fierce about it, and lectures them all constantly about not getting hurt, about not getting blood on his favourite shirt of the week. Sometimes his voice wavers and cracks a little with his anxiety, with his fears about them getting hurt, about losing this fragile family he's built. Laura had no such qualms, was scared of neither blood nor pain. She expected her pack to take care of themselves, and so they did. Laura would have hated Stiles. 

Derek has no particular memories of her having friends at school, though she was by no means unpopular. With her dark cascading hair and her coal black eyes she was an enigma when she walked the halls, smiling at him briefly when they passed but never stopping to chat. He'd seen boys from around the school fall under the spell of that half smile. Her closest classmates- those she deigned to grace with her presence- were those that frequented the library on their breaks, squirrelling away in the stacks of the small school library catching whatever snippets of words they could grab in the hour of high school lunch time.

Laura's truest and best love was literature, a passion she shared rather devoutly with their father. They spent hours together discussing books and stories, weighing the worth of characters and ideas against the authors who executed them. Discussing scientific papers published in journals with words that make his head spin even years into adulthood. Together they kept a massive library in the back of the house, a library so large it spilled into every room, on the stairs, on the mantles, on the couches. Books and the love of them filled up Dad and Laura's lives. It was their own special father-daughter bonding, and Laura loved that most. Anyone who shared this quiet passion was a friend of Laura's.

Stiles' love of reading, his love of learning, is loud. He narrates to Derek sometimes, while Derek is cooking or Derek is cleaning or whenever he thinks Derek's not paying attention. He talks incessantly, and even when he's not talking at all, his concentration is loud. He fills the air around him with the constant buzz of his existence, obnoxious but so alive. Derek isn't good with words, but Stiles doesn't ask him to be- he has enough words for both of them. Laura would never have been able to be in the same room as him for more than 10 minutes. Laura, who only spoke if it mattered, if she had something important to say. Never just to hear herself think aloud. Laura would have hated Stiles.

Derek and Laura, for the most part, got on just fine. They were close in age and played together as children, and as they grew older shared companionable silences more than words. She encouraged Derek to play sports at school, came to the games with their family, but never seemed to particularly care about the score. Derek encouraged her to make friends, to leave the house more often. Memorably, he even invited her out with his friends once or twice. When they saw her at the games, or in the halls, his friends referred to Laura as 'Derek's Hot Sister', and he'd grunt noncommittally because while it wasn't incorrect, it was sort of weird to hear them say it.

For all the boys that fell under Laura's peculiar spell, Laura was interested in none of them. Boys or girls, Laura never seemed to have any interest in anything that wasn't a book. So when she ran into Derek leaving the school, getting into Kate's car, all she had for him was a look of deepest disdain. As though he were giving in to the basest of instincts. It made him ashamed, to see his noble sister look at him in a way she usually reserved for the more stupid of their classmates. She never said anything though, not to their parents and not to Derek.

Derek thinks she definitely hated Kate on the spot, but probably only because she drove a deeply impractical and flashy Corvette in the loudest of reds. Later, of course, Laura hated Kate for different reasons.

The administrative team knocks on the door to Laura's classroom before his, but even with his preternatural sense he shouldn't be able to hear it from two hallways away. Whether it's a fault in the stars or magic, he hears the principal ask “Mrs. Evans, might I see Laura? Grab your things please, dear,” long before the door of his 11th grade math class is pushed open.

As it happens, paper books burn very easily. Many paper books burn even easier. What might have been a controllable fire at its onset quickly turned into a raging inferno, aided and abetted by the gasoline the henchmen used. The mountain ash ring disguised itself easily under the ashes raining down as the building burned, but Derek knows Laura saw it anyway. Tears streaked down her cheeks and she shivered violently as the Alpha power seeped through her veins. The one and only time Derek ever saw her close to losing control, though no red ever reached her coal black eyes.

The firefighters had been able to pull Peter out before they arrived and had rushed him to the hospital already. When the Sheriff's department allows them to see him, he's covered in bandages and reeks of death and decay. Laura doesn't think he'll pull through, and while Derek thinks privately that he's a werewolf and he will, he keeps it to himself. Laura has her game face on though, and she arranges for their new life insurance settlement to pay for Peter with a kind of grace and surety Derek doesn't feel.

They leave Beacon Hills after that, driving east in their mother's old beater towards the rising sun. Neither of them says anything until they hit a gas station somewhere in Oklahoma. They go in to pay together, unable to stay out of each others sight for more than the time it takes to use the washroom. Derek grabs a book- some stupid flimsy adventure thing- off a shelf near the register and offers it to her, like an olive branch. Laura sneers at him.

Stunned, Derek puts the book back on the shelf.

Derek blames himself for the fire, for Kate ruining their lives, and Laura never disagrees. In the days, months, years, after the fire she smiles even less, snarls and orders everything she wants in short spurts of words. They rent an apartment together in New York state. Near enough to visit the city by train, but even their new small fortune in insurance money could never pay off an apartment in the city for long. Derek takes mechanic's work- finds a place that doesn't mind that he's 16 and hasn't graduated. His own father-son moments were all about cars (a taste he appreciated in Kate), and he's not out of his depth finding work with his hands. Laura finds an unfulfilling job in fast food, but is fired soon after. Too quiet, not very good customer service. She doesn't keep looking after that, but starts wandering the streets and hills of their little New York town. She wanders into the big city sometimes- Derek can smell it on her, the exhaust and the vibrancy are hallmarks of a massive city. She smells of other wolves on occasion, like she's met with others as lost as she is. But Laura never talks about it and Derek... well, Derek never asks.

For his part, Derek tries to keep moving. He knows he's wallowing in depression and self-doubt, and it's not exactly fun. He wasn't depressed before all this happened- he was a happy kid before he fucked up his whole life. But it's easy to be bleak when nearly everyone you loved is gone. It's easy to shoulder the blame for so many dead. It's so, so easy to drift from day to day with the hollow ache of their parents bleeding through the holes in his life.

For her part, Laura doesn't help. She's wallowing deep as he is, not half as guilty but still just as alive. She snips at him sometimes- makes cutting remarks about fires, about things _burning_. About his responsibilities as the _only_ brother in her life. As the _only_ Beta of their little pack. Her words are barbs that bite deep, and Derek tries not to bite back.

On bad days, the days where that crushing depression resurfaces, Stiles is a gift. Stiles with his bright smiles and bold laughter, with his boundless sarcasm and dry wit, with his tight hugs and his compassionate kisses. Stiles, who lets Derek curl up in his embrace when he needs it, or gives him space when he doesn't. Stiles who understands loss, who understands that even now Derek isn't over it, won't ever be completely over it. But that's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Stiles doesn't judge him for it, just offers him all the love he needs to deal with it, all the love he can give to make the burden a little lighter. Laura never understood that. Laura who never made new friends after their family died, Laura who demanded they both just be strong without ever wanting to talk about it. Laura who never loved anything that wasn't a piece of paper, that didn't burn up one Autumn day never to be seen again. Laura would have hated Stiles.

22 and 21 come up on Laura and Derek fast in the ensuing years. Derek's coworkers at the little auto shop encourage him to come out for drinks with them for his birthday, so he does. Laura hasn't made any mention of any birthdays or holidays in the years since the fire, so he has nothing else planned. The bar they pick is pleasantly noisy, in a way that really helps substitute for the buzz of the alcohol they feed him, which burns off almost immediately. He gets hit on by a couple of cute people- men and women both. Derek's not unaware of how he looks, of how he's filled out since he was an awkward 16 year old falling for the advances of an older woman. He makes out with a chick at the bar for probably an hour before the bouncer finally decides enough's enough and kicks them both out. He makes up a flimsy excuse and scuttles back to the apartment. Laura's there when he gets back- sitting in the shadows judging him as he locks the door. She doesn't say anything, for which Derek is grateful.

Laura starts to lose weight around when she's 23. She was attractively toned before, but her Alpha muscles seem to be melting off without cause. Her cheekbones are too stark, and her elbows too sharp. Derek starts taking them out to eat every other night, observing her clinically as she picks at a salad. He orders dessert for them both, but she never seems interested, taking two mouthfuls before putting her fork down. He tries talking to her about it only once, but age hasn't made him any better at talking and she still has plenty of reserve to call up the Alpha's snarl, to cow him into involuntary silence. He doesn't mention it after that.

On the nights he doesn't go out with Laura, he goes out with coworkers. He's trying to occupy himself and it works all right for a time. A few months into it, he goes home with a dude from the club, and they have sex on this stranger's living room couch. It's definitely just sex, but the guy is nice enough to let Derek use his shower before he leaves. Laura, gaunt and hollow, is asleep when he gets home and doesn't wake when he settles a blanket over her thin shoulders. Derek tries not to think about it too hard.

Stiles loves sex. In the first years of their relationship he wanted to try everything, twice. His enthusiasm for a rich and varied sex life drags Derek to places on the internet he never wants to visit _ever again_ , but it does help him learn a thing or two. Stiles is generous and warm, so easy to excite, to arouse. Even Derek with his werewolf flexibility and reflexes is challenged by Stiles' love of the trying something new. It can be a brave thing, opening yourself up to someone else for sex that's more than mutual gratification- so different from anything Derek's ever known. But being intimate, together, is important to Stiles, and Derek tries to make a point to reassure him, using the few words and many gestures he knows, that he feels the same. This, especially, Laura would never have understood. For all that she wandered, Derek never got the sense she ever had encounters of the sexual kind. She might have smelled of 'other', but only in a social context. Laura's books were her true love, and when they burned up she never tried to replace them, never desired to fill that ache with buzz-cut hair and plaid shirts. Laura would have hated Stiles.

Months pass again, and Derek doesn't even know what number hookup he comes home from- some red-hair chick from Wisconsin this time- when Laura finally notices. The door clicks shut behind him, and her head snaps up. She screams and throws herself at him, flying into a rage Derek doesn't think her body has the energy for. Her claws are out, but he catches her hands far too easily. He wonders if she's been doing drugs; she's so different from the sister he knew. Gone is the nobility and grace, replaced with an untamed wildness he'd never have imagined in Laura of all people. He wonders how the sister he loved turned into this shell of a wolf. She's too weak even for her Alpha form to have power over him, can't force him to let her go. Her words get to him though, screaming about how his last relationship ruined their whole lives. Ruined her as much as him, maybe even more. How can he even _think_ , how can he be so _selfish_ , how could you Derek, _how could you?_

Eventually her screams turn into sobs, broken and gasping. Her claws retract and they sink to the floor of their little apartment together, broken and so alone. He pets her hair, twisting brittle strands between his fingers. She's all he has, and he can't ruin this. She cries herself to sleep curled into Derek's chest, pleading quietly even in her sleep that he cannot leave her, cannot let her burn too. 

Derek stops hooking up after that. 

Stiles asks about her every so often. What TV shows did she watch? What was her favourite colour? What was she like? She didn't watch TV, her favourite colour was purple. These things are easy, and come to his tongue almost unbidden; memories swift and fond. But as for what made her _Laura_... Derek doesn't know how to answer that. He decides, eventually, that before the fire, she was Laura. And after the fire she was Laura, too, but they weren't the same Laura. Stiles accepts this but he doesn't stop his quiet questions, never stops asking.

Rumours and gossip fly easily, even all the way across the continent. They meet an Omega in their restaurant one night, startled over a chicken salad and lasagna dinner. He's just passing through the area, but he mentions that something wild, something beastly has been seen running through the old Beacon Hills territory. He can't know who they are when he tells them, but Derek thanks him for the gossip anyway and they go back to eating.

Over the week, life starts to seep back into Laura's coal eyes. Derek perks up a little at that, at seeing that noble sister return. He comes home from work one day to see Laura pouring over a copy of The Beacon, the paper from home. Derek hasn't caught her reading anything in near as 8 years, and it stuns him. She talks voluntarily, filling up his shocked silence with words. Tells him there's nothing in the papers or on the internet to confirm the rumour, but she's curious anyway. She names creatures he's never heard of, talks of potential suspects for the few excess animal killing reports she saw online. Derek tries to be encouraging, but he's not very good at it, and what comes out is a gruff 'maybe it's time to go home'. Laura is so quiet for so long he thinks he's messed it up, this fragile thing they have. He's about to apologize, but she interrupts. She'd like to go herself, just her.

Derek's wary- what's happening to her has made her so weak- but she's the Alpha and she's his sister and if this is her chance at healing, her chance to let them both go on, then he doesn't want to stop her.

She buys a plane ticket on Monday, and he sees her to the airport, hauls her bag around. The spark of her nobility is back- she's standing straight and proud- but it's held at bay by the tightness of her skin, the way her fingers shake when she takes her carry-on out of his hands. Still, she waves politely at him as she goes through the gate- gives him a hint of that half smile before the crowd swallows her up.

On Wednesday, he feels her anxiety, her fear, her panic in a quick burst. For just a moment, he hears with total clarity a neighbour two floors down, "The Yankees have been in such a great winning streak this year! I'm sure they have a shot at the World Series!". Then it's quiet again and Derek knows.

On Thursday Derek buys a car at LAX- it's a huge airport, and for the right price you can do just about anything. It's a brand new Camaro, black and polished to gleaming. He realizes somewhat belatedly it's the kind of thing Laura hates. He realizes a moment after that that what Laura hates doesn't matter anymore, will never matter ever again. 

He stops twice for gas, and at the second station there's a spindly turning rack of adventure novels next to the register. Derek knocks it over on his way out the door.


End file.
